xii PREFACE. 



as before hinted, occurs in Part III., where it is attempted 

 to show that the hostility between Science and Religion, 

 about which so much is talked and written, is purely a 

 chimera of the imagination. Putting the case into other 

 language, it may be said that to assert a radical hostility 

 between our Knowledge and our Aspirations, is to postulate 

 such a fundamental viciousness in the constitution of things 

 as the evolutionist, at least, is in no wise bound to acknow- 

 ledge. The real conflict, as I have sought to show, is not 

 between Knowledge and Aspiration, but between the less- 

 imperfect knowledge of any given age and the more-imperfect 

 knowledge of the age which has gone before. For it lies in 

 the nature of progress that the heresy or new-knowledge of 

 yesterday is the orthodoxy or old-knowledge of to-day, 

 and that to those who have learned to associate their 

 aspirations with the old knowledge it may well seem im- 

 possible that like aspirations should be associated with the 

 new. But the experience of many ages of speculative 

 revolution has shown that while Knowledge grows and old 

 beliefs fall away and creed succeeds to creed, nevertheless 

 that Faith which makes the innermost essence of religion 

 is indestructible. Were it not for the steadfast conviction 

 that this is so, what could sustain us in dealing with 

 questions so mighty and so awful that one is sometimes 

 fain to shrink from facing their full import, lest the mind 

 be overwhelmed and forever paralyzed by the sense of its 

 nothingness ? 



Teniob, April 16, 1874. 



